Claim that survey data that I conducted in early 1997 was fraudulent. A computer hard disk crash lost the data for that survey, and people have claimed that the survey was a fraud.

Overview: A) The survey was redone in 2002 and the redone somewhat smaller survey produced similar results. That survey data was available at www.johnlott.org.
B) The survey results in the single paragraphs in the two books where I have referenced this survey data was biased against the claim that I was making. I argued that the simple defensive brandishing or warning shots are not news worthy. The higher the rate of defensive brandishing or warning shots, the easier it is to explain why the media is not biased when it doesn't cover most defensive gun uses. If I wanted to show that the media was more biased, I should have used the surveys with lower defensive brandishing rates. I have also explained why the length of the time people are asked to recall events over can explain the difference in the four surveys on brandishing that have been done over the last twenty years (two designed by me and two by Gary Kleck).
C) Two people who took the survey have said that they took it. John Hamilton, a retired private detective in Tennessee, was interviewed by Professor Jeff Parker at George Mason University. Parker also interviewed Hamilton's sister whom Hamilton told contemporaneously when he took the survey that he had taken it. The other person who has said that he took the survey was David Gross, a former prosecutor in Minnesota. James Lindgren found David Gross credible but thought that Gross might have taken a different 1996 survey, but Gross's statements as well as the survey data from the 1996 survey indicate that Gross took my 1997 survey (e.g., students conducting it, the many few questions involved, the questions asked). The data from the 1996 survey is available from me or from the ICPSR under Hemenway's name. Other people were able to confirm various other aspects, such as the timing of when the survey was done and that I talked to people at the time of the survey. I have also supplied my tax records from 1997 to Joe Olson a tax law professor and other professors that show large payments for research assistants. I have also looked at the 1999 survey data by Hemenway and it is clear based on the answer give for survey respondents in Tennessee and Minesota that neither Hamilton nor Gross could have taken that survey either.
D) As shown below, many people who were working with me on other projects knew of this hard disk crash when it occurred because data for projects that they were working on was also lost.

Bottom line: Science involves replication and I have always made my data available to others. In this case, I had redone this survey in 2002 before the controversy arose and made that data available to anyone who wants access to it. Despite the difference in years and the smaller sample, the survey results from the second survey were similar to those from the first survey. None of my critics have redone the survey using the questions that I provided.

Evidence on specific claims

1) Did I Attribute the 98 Percent Brandishing Number to Others? No

Apparently, some credence is being given to the claim that I have attributed the 98 percent brandishing estimate to others instead of myself. Some are taking this as evidence that I never conducted the survey. Yet, the fact is I never attributed this number to anyone else other than myself. It is claimed that I attributed this number to Gary Kleck on one occasion as well as the Los Angeles Times, Gallup, and Peter Hart during a couple of other times. Attachments entitled “Did I Attribute the 98 Percent Brandishing Number to Others?” and “Cases where 98% number was used” provide a detailed discussion of these issues. However, two brief statements are useful here:

The Independence Institute web site posted a piece that contained the one reference to Gary Kleck’s work.

I've got no specific recollection of editing the piece, but the evidence
seems to indicate that attributing the 98% figure to Kleck was an error by
the Independence Institute, rather than an error on the author's part.

Re-discovering Kleck's 98% figure from Social Problems (an article I thought about a lot in, say, 1994, but which I have rarely thought about recently) makes me believe that I added Kleck to the 98% sentence in the belief that the 98% figure came from him.

The fact that I added Kleck is, of course, also supported by the Rocky
Mountain News version of the Lott article (a version I did not edit) which
contains no reference to Kleck.

. .

Best wishes,
Dave Kopel

------ End of Forwarded Message

The second case of false attribution is that I claimed that the Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart were the source of the 98 percent number. Where people get the claim is by combining two sentences in a Chicago Tribune op-ed that I had in 1998 (the same op-ed was also republished, for example, in the Washington Times).

The relevant passage from the op-ed reads:

“Other research shows that guns clearly deter criminals. Polls by the Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart Research Associates show that there are at least 760,000, and possibly as many as 3.6 million, defensive uses of guns per year. In 98 percent of the cases, such polls show, people simply brandish the weapon to stop an attack.”

Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines the word “such” as “like or similar,” but not as the same. “Such” is merely referring back to this type of polls and not those specific polls. If the reference in the second sentence had been to “these” polls and not “such” polls, I would think that the critics would have an argument.

Statements by those who have made general statements about the 1997 survey

2) Statements by others documenting the loss of my computer hard disk in July 1997

Dear Editor:
A column appearing in the Post yesterday (Feb. 11, "A Fabricated Fan and Many Doubts") implies that economist John Lott made up the claim that a computer malfunction destroyed data from his research on gun control. At the time Lott was engaged in this research, we were colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School. I clearly recall John relating the computer data-loss incident to me then -- many years before the current controversy about his work arose.
Just so you know, I'm not relating this information to you because I support Lott's position on guns (I don't). I'm relating it to you because I think journalists -- even the ones you employ to write political gossip columns like this one -- should live up to their professional obligation to check out the facts before they make claims harmful to an individual's reputation.
Yours,
Dan M. Kahan

The Washington Post unfairly casts doubt about whether John Lott suffered a hard disk crash on his computer in 1997 ( A Fabricated Fan and Many Doubts, February 11). I was co-authoring a paper with him at the time and I was affected by some data that were lost. We lost a very large data set that had been used to estimate the wage premium paid to workers exposed to long-term latent hazards in the workplace. The loss prevented us from performing additional research and significantly delayed publication.

John Lott and I worked together on a project examining the impact on
government spending of women being granted voting privileges. Some of
this research, utilizing older census data, was published in the Journal
of Political Economy in December 1999. But the publication of other
research utilizing recent survey data was set back when the basic data
was lost in 1997 when John's hard disk crashed. Thus, assertions that
John fabricated the story of his disk crashing are incorrect.

A column the Post published this week implies that John Lott fabricated a
story that a computer crash destroyed some data related to his gun
research. I have collaborated with Lott on two research projects --
neither related to guns -- and remember him talking about the crash
several years ago. The crash indirectly affected one of our projects, as
Lott had to divert much time to re-create his lost databases. I recall
him telling me how some of his philosophical opponents refused to help
him by returning a copy of some of his data, despite the fact that the
only reason they had the data in the first place was that Lott had given
the data to them!

During our collaborations, John Lott has been an exemplar of integrity in
academic research. It is not always easy to work with John, as we
sometimes have disagreed over how best to conduct our tests and write up
our results. But always, Lott has been honest, insightful, and willing to
consider arguments and accept data that do not agree with his prior
beliefs. He is an excellent social scientist.

It is time to put to bed any rumors that question Lott's credibility or
seriousness as a researcher. Give him credit for taking unpopular
positions, sticking to those positions in the face of vitriolic personal
attacks, and sharing his data and exposing his research to scrutiny more
openly than his opponents. You -- and I -- might not like like all of his
conclusions. But that makes him all the more important to engage
seriously in policy debates.

I have worked with Lott on three research projects (none related to guns).
The computer crash at which you snicker indirectly affected one of our
projects, as Lott had to divert much time to re-create his lost databases.
Although Lott got most of his data back, he really did lose some of it.

Lott re-created his lost data with a new survey. It is difficult to
believe that, in a book filled with empirical tests that have been
replicated by others, Lott would fabricate a single number, and that his
made-up number would just happen to be statistically indistinguishable
from the results of the new survey.

If you are concerned about research integrity, your aim is off.
Throughout the controversy over gun research, Lott has shared his data
with all comers. In contrast, some of Lott's critics refuse to share the
data they use to attack Lott's findings. Which seems more suspicious to
you?

You -- and I -- may not like or agree with all of Lott's conclusions.
But no serious researcher can question Lott's integrity or skill as a
social scientist. The whole point of Kennedy's editorial is about the
importance of integrity in the conduct of research. I would hope that
Science has higher verification standards than this piece shows.

John,
This is a copy of my letter, which I sent to the Post yesterday morning shortly after
we talked.

-----------
On February 11, 2003, in the article "A Fabricated Fan and Many Doubts", the Washington Post incorrectly questioned whether John Lott experienced a computer crash in the summer of 1997.

I can testify that Mr. Lott's computer crashed at that time and that he lost everything he had on his hard drive. He and I discussed this crash many times. John and I were co-authors on a project that ended prior to the crash. Because he lost all the data from our project, I replaced as much of the data as I could.

I believe you draw an inaccurate comparison between the issue of Dr.
Lott's survey and the Dr. Bellesiles case in your article "A Fabricated
Fan and Many Doubts" of February 11. I am not an expert on the Dr.
Bellesiles case, but my understanding is that there was little or no
contemporaneous corroborating evidence of the flood that he reported as
destroying his records and that his results were not reproducible by
other scholars in the field. Whatever the case is with Dr. Bellesiles,
these are definitely not true in Dr. Lott's case.

There are numerous contemporaneous witnesses to Dr. Lott's hard-drive
crash - I am one of them. I began working for Dr. Lott as a research
assistant shortly after the hard-drive crash in 1997 and I distinctly
remember him mentioning it to me at the time. More importantly, Dr.
Lott's general results have been reproduced in many peer reviewed
academic journals and he has a strong reputation among academics for
distributing his data and publishing reproducible research.

Dr. Lott himself has now reproduced the survey and released the names of
all people who worked on it and the phone records from the calls. The
results are largely in line with his previous results and no one has
questioned the integrity of the new survey.

Dr. Lott has a strong academic reputation for remaining faithful to the
scientific protocol. Your comparison was unwarranted and inaccurate.

Statement in response to Jim Lindgren’s summary of my comments relating to John R. Lott’s Survey Work on Self-Defensive Uses of Guns by David B. Mustard, Thursday 16 October 2003

"In the summer and fall of 1996, I had numerous conversations with John Lott about how he was going to extend the original paper (JLS January 1997); a survey to learn more about defensive uses was one of those extensions."